By this point the Polos were on the main Silk Road, and they probably followed along the oases to the south and east of the Takla Makan Desert Yarkant ("Yarcan"), Hotan ("Cotan"), Che'erchen ("Ciarcian"), and Lop Nur (Lop Lake).
Hotan security officials declined to discuss the episode, and an office in Urumqi that handles inquiries from foreign reporters refused to answer faxed questions.
Further linking China's terrorism issues to those of religious extremism, what seems to have been a carefully staged confession video of a Uighur, Mu'er Zhati, accused as one of three assailants in a knife attack on a Chinese chess hall in Hotan city, was aired on state media on June 21st.
On August 1st, in an anti-terror operation near the city of Hotan, south-east of Kashgar, the authorities claimed to have recruited 30,000 volunteers to help encircle and hunt down ten terror suspects, nine of whom were killed.
It can scarcely be coincidental that the Buddhist literature of Hotan, flourishing so vigorously during the 10th century, ended abruptly with the Muslim conquest at the beginning of the 11th.
Ancient Iranian religion, diverse beliefs and practices of the culturally and linguistically related group of ancient peoples who inhabited the Iranian plateau and its borderlands, as well as areas of Central Asia from the Black Sea to Khotan (modern Hotan, China).
Hotan was a great centre of Buddhism during the 1st millennium ce, and all the surviving literature in Khotanese is either Buddhist or coloured by Buddhism.
For millennia the jade carved by the Chinese consisted of nephrite from the region of Hotan (Khotan) and Yarkand in what is now Sinkiang.
China directly controlled the Central Asian jade-yielding regions of Hotan and Yarkand between about 1760 and 1820, during which time much fine nephrite was sent to Beijing for carving.
Khotanese was spoken near the modern city of Hotan (conventional spelling Khotan) on the southern route across the Takla Makan Desert and within about 100 miles (160 km) to the north and to the east of Hotan, where manuscripts have been found, mainly at the sites of former shrines and monasteries.
Buddhism entered China from India in the 1st century ce, whereas goods (often in the form of booty) and ideas came predominantly from Central Asian Gandharan, Yuezhi, and Scythian cultures along the various desert trade routes via the cities of Hotan (Khotan) to the south, Kucha (Kuqa) in the centre, and Turfan (Turpan) to the north.
